Written 1859 (1 September - 29 October), inbetween writing
Castle Richmond
Serialized 1860 (October 6 & 13),
Cassell's Illustrated Family Paper
Published in a book 1861 (November), Tales of All Countries:
First Series, Chapman and Hall
Date: Tue, 09 Dec 1997 17:09:45 +0000 Another piece of whimsy, derived from the time when trollope was asked to
go and sort out the Egyptian routing of letters on behalf of the General
Post Office. In this vein, I am reminded of a visit I made to Alice
Springs. There I saw a telegraph office which the British had constructed.
The telegraph line completed the routing from London to Sydney via India,
and reduced the time taken for communications to reach the colony from 7
weeks to a few hours. How amazing that must have been, and how much more
it must have meant to the people in those days than, for example, the
relentless increases in technology mean to us today. But I digress...
Two things jump out of the pages. One is the attitude of different kinds
of women to men and each other. There is especially the wife who hangs
upon her husband, asserting her rights against the wiles of other females.
Then we have the daughters who would deny flirting, but are more than cross
when mother tries to remove them from temptation. And, of course the
unprotected female who tries to insinuate herself into the parties of men
whilst making it clear she has no need of a brother or father for support.
Oh yes and there are others too, but I leave others to explore this rich
ground.
The other side is the tourist angle. The noise. The guides touting for
business. The robbing. The fact you are in a foreign land and are at the
mercy of those who organise tours for you. Of course the English have
always tried the expedient of turning foreign parts into clones of the
homeland, as you can see if you pop over to Bermuda or other such places,
all of which rather defeats the idea of going abroad. Maybe that's why the
French love Jersey and the British hate Vancouver Island?
Ah well, enjoy the story, which starts today and is "due" this weekend.
Robert Wright
Re: Short Story: "An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids"
From the response I got from my students a couple of
years ago I'd like to say that this seems to
the sort of story which can offend some readers today
very much. I think Trollope is kinder to Miss Dawkins
than is obvious: he feels for her loneliness; he shows
how strained is her existence; he suggests how the
others only regard her as a nuisance or for what they
might get out of her. He even acknowledges her desire
to have the adventure of existence for real. Yet it is
also all too clear he thinks her a nag, a leech, someone
who is living an unnatural life, deserving of snubbing
when she lies to manipulate an invitation out of Mr
Damer.
Similarly although Trollope again tells some harsh & ironic truths
about travelling--guides are rapacious, as a rich American
or British person everyone you meet is trying to rip you
off, when you get to the great object it's loses its mystery
and what with the heat, the flies, the discomfort, and tedium
of it all--maybe you'd be better off staying home, his depiction
of the Arabians the travellers meet grates. He has some ugly
phrases about them.
I would argue irony is equally directed at the Frenchman,
the English father, the mother who calls out for protection
(she is a sugar bowl to flies), the daughter who is coy
and so on. The story has a brilliantly realized landscape
and feel. But it's blunt honesty and dislike of what
we would call an unattached or independent woman
probably put a lot of people on our list off.
Ellen Moody
From: hopfnerj@cc.tacom.army.mil Okay, maybe I'm the only reader here with an adolescent mindset. Or
perhaps I'm merely the only one who lacks handy access to an OED.
But I've a question for the list-members who do have access to an OED
or the like: did Trollope slip a joke past the editors in his
"Unprotected Female" story, or am I merely reading anachronistically?
I refer to the throw-away line (page 101 of the World's Classics
edition of the Early Short Stories) that occurs just after Mrs. Damer
has been complaining about her donkey. Trollope gives Mrs. Damer
this dialog: "...Oh, dear! oh, dear! this animal does hurt me so!
every time he moves he flings his head about, and that gives me such
a bump."
Then, at the start of the next paragraph, we have "'Majestic piles,
are they not?' said Miss Dawkins..." And a few lines later she
reiterates, "Immense piles."
Miss Dawkins is talking about the pyramids, which at this point are
visible to the party at a distance of about two miles. But the
juxtaposition of the two bits of dialog, and the equivocal nature of
the word "piles" as I understand it, makes me wonder whether Trollope
mightn't have been snickering up his sleeve. "Unprotected female"
indeed--someone give that poor woman a padded saddle!
My dictionaries, and my reference books about slang terms, neither
shed any light on the question of how long the word "piles" has
meant, among other things, hemorrhoids, or on the question of whether
this usage was to be found in British English as far back as the
1850s. So what about it: may we conclude that Trollope might have
been enjoying a little joke, or instead must I strive to elevate my
deplorable level of reading?
Otherwise I agree with previous comments that have appeared on this
story, especially those from John Mize and from Ellen Moody. Miss
Dawkins is not an altogether admirable character, but the hostility
Trollope marshals against her doesn't seem to spring principally from
the fact that she speaks a feminist line. His hostility arises
because she isn't walking the talk of independence, not because she's
trying to be independent. Moreover, in common with Miss Dawkins,
none of the other characters seems likable either. The story reminds
me a little of a TV sitcom where all the main characters have
exaggerated personalities or lead with their faults foremost, and
where the audience is supposed to be laughing at the characters,
not with them.
I agree with earlier comments, too, about the odd picture Trollope
paints here of foreign tourists, given that he himself was devoted to
foreign travel. I'm sure he ran into quite a few ugly tourists in
his day, and many whose whole aim in traveling was to make foreign
locales as much like home as possible. Probably the urge to have
some fun at their expense was irresistible. But one can come away
from the story thinking that Trollope disesteemed travelers as a
class, just as one can come away thinking that he disesteemed women
who tried to make an independent go of their lives. I'm not sure
that either reading would be strictly fair to the text, though.
"Robert Wright" Alas for me, I was also one who noticed the joke about piles loud and clear,
but wondered whether it was my juvenile brain and love of puns. Piles is
still the usual description in England of the distressing medical condition
haemmorhoids, and I am sure that would still have been the case 130 years
ago. My grandmother used the term, and she was well over 90 when she died
in 1980.
Robert J Wright Re: Short Story: "Unprotected Female..." and "Immense Piles"
I was going dutifully to look up "piles" in my OED, but am
happy to defer to Robert's grandmother. I admit I missed
that joke. Alas. But I believe it to be very much in Trollope's
style. There was an article by John Sutherland in the _TLS_
sometime back in which he reviewed a book which discussed
hidden sexual puns, innuendoes, events, and what we'd
call symbols in Victorian fiction. The book apparently went
to great length to find bisexual and homosexual puns too.
Sutherland rejoiced at this book, and in his review added
some anecdotes which included a couple of stories about
Thackeray at a men's club, and some women too at their
version of a girls-only gossip group. Sutherland agreed with
the writer, but was in effect arguing that one doesn't need
to be supersubtle. The jokes are not covert; they are overt.
The idea was if the reader didn't want to see it, wasn't
looking, he or she wouldn't be disturbed, but if he or
she was "alert" to such jokes, they are there a-plenty.
I'd like to use this opportunity briefly to look forward to
"A Ride to Palestine" because that is a rare open
sexually ambiguous story. We will find a young woman
dressed as a young man who applies to our narrator
for help in riding across Palestine. Among her/his
many difficulties are the saddle which is one meant
for a large man. Trollope plays upon this and we
are told how sore this strange young man--to whom
our narrator is "strangely" attracted. What's interesting
in this story is the tone is not that of the robust joke;
but is more modern and seems to explore through wit
the ambiguous nature of sexual experience.
There is another "level" to the "piles" pun. In my reading
of this story Trollope mocks Mrs Damer as another
"unprotected" female as much as he mocks Miss Dawkins.
There is a ironic contrast set up between these two. The
names are alike. I see Trollope as showing us that
Mrs Damer is no model for women either.
There is more to Trollope than is to be found in
Barchester Towers. John Letts once wrote me
that what he'd like to see was a book on the "unknown"
Trollope, the man of the later dark books, the ironical
presence behind the cheer, the saturnine man,
the writer of the short stories and some striking
_novellas_ in which various radical points about
divorce, bigamy, pregnancy outside marriage,
the Irish, and other unacceptable topics are explored.
Ellen Moody
Someone who must remain unidentified suddenly wrote in:
For the 'Unprotected Female', the introduction points out that a
misogynistic thread follows Miss Dawkins, the single woman traveling
alone. To pick up on the movie theme, here this part would be taken
by a young Maggie Smith.
From: hansenb@frb.govf It's funny how we misunderstand one another on these lists. When
Ellen wrote her original post on the Unprotected Female, I was sure
her caution for offense was about Miss Dawkins. I reckoned that the
readers open to offense were those on the list itself who had been or
might be unprotected females while traveling. Just as Robert
mentioned the taking of political correctness back a century
(something only yesterday I mentioned to someone off-list), I thought
Ellen feared that criticizing such a single woman today would put
people off. Now it turns out that her concern is for the 'one eyed
Arab' reference.
Bart
To: trollope-l@teleport.com
From: John Mize At 10:59 PM 12/21/97, Ellen wrote:
I don't know
if I qualify as one of Bart's ahistorical 20th century feminists. I never
called Gilmore a stalker, but I did say his obsessiveness was similar in
kind, if not in degree, to that of the stalker. Even so, I wasn't offended
by Trollope's portrait of Miss Dawkins. She seems to me to be the familiar
bachelor uncle or friend who sponges off his married friends and relations
while pretending to be independent. Henry Thoreau was a good example of
this type. As has been noted, Walden Pond was not so far from civilization
that one could not hear Mrs. Emerson's dinner bell. Major Pendennis in
Thackeray's Pendennis is a fictional example of the type. Trollope might be
a little more annoyed at a woman who plays this game than a man, but I'll
forgive him this time.
Personally I much preferred Miss Dawkins to the other tourists in
the story; she was the best of a bad lot. I agreed with Trollope's negative
take on tourists and tourism. I always cringed when I was outside the
United States and ran into American tourists. They embarrassed me so much
that I took to using a cover story that I was a Canadian, and I hoped no one
would talk about hockey, since all I knew was "Put the puck in the net, eh?"
I also always hated to be in countries with per-capita incomes below that of
the United States, where people wanted to get money from me. I felt
beseiged and guilty. I always preferred countries richer than ours, like
Japan and Germany, where the natives looked at me with indifference, or at
worst, benign contempt.
As far as political correctness goes, I do suspect we Americans are
a little more sensitive to criticism than are Europeans. In the United
States we Birkenstock-wearing, treehugging, cheese-eating neo-Maoists are
much too empathetic, tolerant and in touch with the whole cosmos to mock
anyone, except of course, Donald Trump, Jerry Falwell, and ... because,
after all, those people do deserve it. Even those brave, independent
minded, Judaeo-Christian, free market neo and/or paleo-conservatives who
coined the term "politically correct" and are sublimely tolerant of jokes
about women, Jews, blacks, etc. lose their composure when their heroes, such
as Jesus Christ, Ronald Reagan and Ronald McDonald, are under attack.
Martin Luther had it right. The real question is whose ox is being gored.
This to Rachel:
I agree that there is a good deal of irony directed
at everyone in the story. In this it is like
Austen.
Ellen
Re: Misogyny and Anti-feminism
Dear Everyone
I am "snuffed" out because I am actually not that
not offended by "The Unprotected Female." There is one line
in the story which makes me wince: "the hideous brown,
shrieking, one-eyed Arab." I can agree with Trollope that
when one travels as a tourist and is therefore one of the
wealthy (relatively speaking) of the world one can be
bombarded by belligerent tradesmen who think you
are there to be fleeced, by aggressive beggars, and even
by thieves (this happened to my husband and I while in
Rome). Personally I'm not keen on Miss Dawkins as she is
presented, and as I suggested even her "faults" are balanced
by a real sensitivity in the language to her loneliness,
alienation, distance from others, and need of other people.
However, I taught this story twice--and at the same time also
assigned "The Relics..." As I said in my first post on "The
Relics..." I invited the girls in the class to express whatever
they felt about Trollope's portrait of the Old Maid wielding
the scissors. I assumed they would be angry. Not a peep.
But when we got to this story, they were indignant. Maybe
it was the title that irritated them. I did begin "The
Unprotected Female" by apologizing for the above superfluously
racist description of the Arab beggars, but have to admit
when I looked about encountered blank looks. Again my
students were not at all upset. Now I thought the crack
against Arabs far worse than anything said about Miss Dawkins
as Miss Dawkins is treated like a person and they are in
this story (not elsewhere) generally treated like so
many bothersome flies.
I brought this matter up because of the varying amounts of
dismay expressed at "The Relics..." here and because I
half-expected my fellow-readers to feel put-off in some
way or other by two elements in the story: Trollope's
attitude to the unattached or independent female and
his way of describing the Arab guides and beggars.
Ellen Moody
To Trollope-L
December 24, 1997
R: Short Story: "The Unprotected Female at the Pyramids"
I agree with just about everything John Mize
wrote about the story. Yes Trollope is satirizing a whole
variety of tourists from the moment the story opens and
we find them staying in a hotel which repeats the experience
of life they know at home to the moment it closes when we
are told the tiny groups within the larger group we have
met on its way to the pyramids reformed with others of
their own kind to go see another "monument" which can
have no no more effect on them than what they have
taken away from the Pyramids.
Still, in the context of Trollope's
own life his attitude towards tourism remains enigmatic.
We have seen him mocking the attitude towards relics,
towards the visitation of "tourist attractions." People
are like flies and the attraction the mysterious
sugar bowl, which I rather think most people are "attracted"
to because others have been there before them and it
becomes "the place" to go to, the "somewhere" to
be photographed against or to take something away
from as opposed to "nowhere." Yet Trollope himself
loved to travel. He wrote 5 major travel books. A number
of his novels use material from his travels, and many
other of the stories evidence his fascination with
the experience of travel itself and the places he
has gone to. Are we to assume when he got there
he knew enough to go "nowhere" where there
was "nobody" but the reality of the culture itself
as evidenced by the people no-one wants to
photograph and their habitats which have no
relics in them? Maybe. He writes very good
travel books which capture the essence of
a place and people. Still one might come away
thinking he mocks travel itself, when what
he mocks is a way of travelling which is
not travelling from oneself and one's own
world, troubles, values, predisposition, and
troubles at all. What's "wrong" with the
Damers, Miss Dawkins, the American and
the Frenchman is they might as well as
have stayed home. And when they get there,
ironically, they feel this truth and are dismayed.
As a side comment--having nothing to do witht
the attitude of the story, its "message"--I'd like
to remark how brilliantly it is realized, how
natural and persuasive is the dialogue, how the
scene in the desert and the feel of the place
is brought before us, how the groups and
movements and their dialogues and gestures
are balanced against one another (both to
reinforce and ironically undercut--Mrs Damer,
the "protected" lady is certainly no-one for
us to admire nor imitate). This is a man who
has a real gift for dramatic narrative and
psychologized and pictorial verbal art.
Ellen Moody
To Trollope-L
Re: Short Story: "Unprotected Female..." and pylys
Tonight over dinner I told my husband about the perceived
bawdy joke in the above joke, he was, of course not lazy,
and when we were done, went straight to our OED.
We discovered piles meaning "a disease characterized by
tumours of the veins of the lower rectum, haemorrhoids" goes
back in the records to 1400-50 where one read in
a medical manuscript of a "good medicine for the
pylys;" in 1527 we read of "sores and pylys on the
fondament like wrattes;" in 1533 Elyot wrote of
"piles or hemoroids," and the descriptions by
the 19th century in various diaries get quite
graphic and unpleasant but very recognizable to anyone
who has endured or known someone who has endured
this unhappy condition.
The most embarrassing incident
I have ever experienced on the Net occurred one day on Victoria.
A man who doubtless (really doubtless) meant to write
off-list, pressed "r" to some message which had gone
to all Victoria and we were 'treated' to his description of
his most uncomfortable piles. The poor man had to
come onto that list and apologize. I confess
when I reached the sentence which included
the word "piles" and realized what had happened,
I immediately pressed Control D. But then I always
hide my eyes in movies when something unpleasant
gets too graphic.
Cheers to all,
Ellen
To: trollope-l@teleport.com
From: Robert Wright
Subject: Short Stories - "An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids" -- Introduction
Sender: owner-trollope-l@teleport.com
Subject: Short Stories -- The Unprotected Female Piles On
To: trollope-l@teleport.com
Sender: owner-trollope-l@teleport.com
Subject: Short Stories - Piles
http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~wright
email wright@dircon.co.uk
Subject: Short Story: "An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids"
"Yet is is
also all too clear he thinks her a nag, a leech, someone
who is living an unnatural life, deserving of snubbing
when she lies to manipulate an invitation out of Mr
Damer.
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